North Texas Advocacy Coalition

The North Texas Advocacy Coalition is comprised of members of the North Texas Commission – businesses, municipalities, and institutions of higher education – who are focused on positively affecting the 86th legislative session to ensure North Texas will remain a business friendly and vibrant region. The Coalition is non-partisan and does not endorse candidates.

Who’s on board?

North Texas area Fortune 500 companies, municipalities, higher education institutions, chambers of commerce and other business associations.

Make an impact.

The members of the North Texas Advocacy Coalition work together to set the legislative priorities of the North Texas Commission, to share those priorities with our state Legislators, and during the 86th Session, work to ensure those priorities stay top of mind. Learn more and join the North Texas Advocacy Coalition at ntxadvocacy.org.

Membership of the North Texas Advocacy Coalition is open to North Texas Commission members as well as affiliate associations. To learn more about membership in the North Texas Commission, contact Amber Zuckerman at amber@ntc-dfw.org.

Regional Air Monitors

As part of the NTC’s work to improve air quality in North Texas, we manage the largest network of air pollution monitors in the North Texas region. Our 21 stations are spread across the greater North Texas region (including Wichita Falls and Abilene) and continuously monitor the air for the presence of 84 volatile organic compounds (or “VOCs”). VOCs include pollutants that are known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects; some VOCs also contribute to ozone formation. VOCs are monitored to assess the potential for measured concentrations to impair health. The NTC Regional Air Monitoring Program is a collaboration with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), and is the product of a 2011 bi-partisan legislative effort (SB 527) to gather better data about the impact of increased drilling in the Barnett Shale on North Texas air quality.

In early 2012, the NTC convened a committee of representatives from North Texas municipalities, universities, businesses, and non-profits to identify potential locations for new monitors. Working closely with the TCEQ, this committee finalized its list of recommended sites. By September 2012, we completed installation of our first “automated gas chromatograph” (or “AutoGC”) station on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington, directly adjacent to an active natural gas drilling site. Since then, we have created a total of eleven entirely new air monitoring stations, replaced equipment at an additional six stations, and assumed management of four other stations already in operation.

Because most of our monitoring stations measure air quality every hour, the 21 stations have collectively measured over ten million VOC concentrations since 2012. This data set provides a definitive and long-term examination of the relationship between oil and gas activities and air quality in North Texas. To date, none of these millions of measurements have shown VOC concentrations to exceed TCEQ’s air monitoring comparison values (AMCVs). AMCVs are screening levels for ambient air set to protect human health and welfare. Health-based AMCVs are safe levels at which exposure is unlikely to result in adverse health effects. Because AMCVs are set sufficiently below a level that would be expected to cause adverse health effects, an exceedance does not necessarily mean that an adverse health effect would be expected, but rather than an in-depth review is needed. For more information on AMCVs,click here.

More information on the North Texas Commission Regional Air Monitoring Program can be found here: